Glory Girl Returns
by Thinker6
Summary: Victoria Dallon's family betrayed her and locked her in the asylum, but she never gave up hope. Now an attack by the Slaughterhouse Nine gives her a chance to escape. Victoria must fight with words and wits to win her freedom...and fight to save her soul, as well. Will Glory Girl return as a hero, or a villain? / This story has two alternate paths following Victoria's choices.
1. Predicament

"A through M? N through Z?"

Blink.

"N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U , V, W, X, Y-"

Blink.

"Okay. That's a Y. Next letter. A through M? N through Z? Space? Period?"

Blink.

"Okay, that's a period. The word is AMY. Next letter."

Victoria was losing patience and it was only twenty minutes into her diary entry. The words were clear in her head but her progress was frustratingly slow. Her leftmost pair of eyes gazed at the whiteboard where her nurse, Miss Worthington, was writing her words.

DEAR AMY. THEY SAY YOURE GONE. BUT I CANT STOP THINKING ABOUT YOU. I HAVE TIME TO THINK NOW. BECAUSE OF WHAT YOU DID TO ME. CANT MOVE CANT SLEEP CANT EAT REAL FOOD CANT BATHE SELF ALL I CAN DO IS THINK AND ALL I HAVE TO THINK ABOUT IS YOU. AMY. AMY.

She knew her letter wouldn't reach Amy. The useless doctors wouldn't even send it, wouldn't even _try_. The letter was an exercise. She was supposed to write what she _wished_ she could tell her sister if she could.

Amy. She was getting stuck on Amy's name again. But it was so tempting. She wished she could speak, wished she could savor the taste of her sister's name on her lips.

Blinking would have to do.

AMY. A. M. Y. YOURE ALL I HAVE LEFT. MOM DAD SARAH CRYS THEY SHUT ME AWAY AND FORGOT ME BUT I KNOW YOU REMEMBER. I KNOW YOU THINK OF ME EVERY DAY MINUTE SECOND. BECAUSE YOU BETRAYED ME. BECAUSE YOU LOVE ME. YOU ALWAYS LOVED ME AND I NEVER KNEW HOW MUCH.

WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME AMY. YOU MADE ME LOVE YOU SO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY. I NEED YOU TO HOLD ME TOUCH ME FIX ME BEG FOR MY FORGIVENESS BUT YOU LOCKED YOURSELF AWAY WHERE I CANT REACH YOU. WHY ARE YOU SO CRUEL. DO YOU HATE ME AMY. ALL I WANT IS TO SEE YOU AGAIN BUT THEY WONT LET ME GO. I BEG AND BEG BUT THEY NEVER LISTEN

Victoria _wriggled_ , a ripple of violent motion, her muscles flailing as her useless nerves misfired. Raw and ragged emotion in desperate need of release. Couldn't move, couldn't scream, couldn't even cry with the useless tear ducts her sister had given her-

Miss W shivered. "Victoria, please."

Victoria blinked and struggled to make her body go still. It took long seconds before she had enough of a grip on herself to dial down her aura.

It was getting harder to keep her awe-inducing aura under control, now that it was one of her only means of expression. All she had were the three. Blinking. Wriggling. And her aura.

She closed her eyes - all of her eyes that she was capable of closing. The signal for a break.

Miss W ran a hand through her gray hair and took a long swig from a plastic water bottle. The woman had been speaking out loud for an hour now. Then she tapped a faucet next to her. Victoria wriggled, an agreed-upon signal. _Yes._ The nurse turned the faucet and a tube squirted a pulse of cool water into Victoria's lower left mouth, the one that was connected to her stomachs.

Victoria tried to calm herself. Writing in her diary was painful but it was necessary. She needed it to stay sane.

That was what the doctors told her, anyway. She knew better. She wasn't sane. No one could stay sane like this. She was meant to be a high school girl, a superhero, the toast of high society. Now she was a jumble of body parts, mashed onto a fleshy carpet the rough size and shape of a queen-sized mattress cover.

Trapped in a body that wasn't her own, that she couldn't move. Trapped in a _mind_ that wasn't her own, that didn't move in all the ways it should.

But she wrote her diary anyway, to hold on to the single, thin thread of sanity she had left.

Everyone had anchors in their mind. Touchstones that made them strong, that gave you something to live for. Their health, lover, family, career, hobbies. If they lost one of those precious things they could turn to the others to hang on to their sense of identity and worth. An old woman who distracted herself from her failing health by bringing smiles to her grandchildren. A man who lost his only child and lost himself in his hobbies.

All of her anchors were gone, now. The world had stolen them away. Health? Love? Family? Career? Hobbies? They were all gone and she didn't have a chance in hell of getting them back in the cramped little asylum room where her traitor family had locked her away and forgotten her. Dad was the only one who visited her and he hadn't come in weeks.

The doctors thought she'd find something to live for in the asylum. They were delusional. They gave her a crappy TV set in her room, endless therapy sessions rehashing the same themes, and 'social time' with broken people like herself. Useless. No stimulation, no change, no hope, nothing, nothing, nothing.

The natural end was to let herself drift. Unanchored, untethered, to devolve into a feral animal or an unmoving vegetable for the nurses to feed and water every day. Too many of the inmates here did.

But she still had one anchor remaining. Only one. Untouched, untouchable by anything the world could do to her.

 _Love._

The undying spark of _love_ her wonderful, terrible sister had planted in her mind.

Victoria had denied it at first, had used her other anchors to distract herself and suppress it for a time, but now they were all gone and she was left alone in her unmoving body and unmoving mind with only that pure spark of love for company.

After the first month she had come to see her sister's violation as a gift. She hated her sister with a burning passion, but feeling nothing but hatred for months would have been so...lonely. The love gave her something to balance it out. The only positive desire that moved her anymore, the only motive spark that kept her sane and made her _think_.

On her good days it gave her focus. She fantasized about their reunion. She would make a cunning plan, invoke an obscure law for patient's rights and force the doctors to send her to the Birdcage. The doors would open wide and Amy would be there waiting for her. Amy would rush to her side and grovel and beg for forgiveness and promise to never betray her again. Then Amy would touch her with her hands, her beautiful deadly hands, and this time her touch would heal her and make her human again. She would wrap her new arms around Amy and they would cry their hearts out and hug each other tight and never let go and everything would be _right_ again-

Those were the good days.

On other days, her bad days, she let herself give in to the spark completely and spent hours writing confession letters. Telling Amy that she forgave her for everything, that none of it was Amy's fault, that it had all been her _own_ fault for being a heartless bitch of a sister and letting Amy down when she needed her the most. Begging Amy for forgiveness and promising that she didn't mind how she had punished her, she deserved it and humbly accepted it and was _grateful_ to Amy for making her like this-

Miss W was staring at Victoria with wide eyes, drops of sweat beading on her face. She put down her plastic cup with a shaking hand and cleared her throat.

Victoria turned down her aura. She immediately hated herself for doing it. Responding to her handler's cue like a trained dog.

She couldn't go on like this. She had to get out of here, somehow. Go to the Birdcage with Amy, or get cured and become a hero again, or...it didn't matter. Anything. Just _out_.

She fantasized her escape every day, running impossible scenes through her mind and trying to imagine them so vividly they would come true.

...

 _A new cape triggers with medical powers and goes on a tour of America healing the sick, and she comes to her asylum room, and she's an innocent young girl with a face like an angel and she lays hands on her and in an instant she's whole again-_

 _The heroes catch one of the bio-manipulating villains, Monstrum or Blasto or Chrystalis, and he makes a deal for a reduced sentence, he comes into her room scowling and the guards uncuff him to do his work-_

 _She's outdoors during 'recreational' time watching the mobile patients exercise in the courtyard when a golden glow shines in the sky and Scion descends from the heavens, radiating his healing light-_

 _She hears an alarm sound as villains attack the asylum, and they overlook her and she overhears their secrets, and she tells the PRT and they reward her with a secret experimental treatment-_

 _She hears an alarm sound as villains attack the asylum, but they're good-hearted rogues and one of them takes a fancy for her and takes her with him, and he has a fleshwarping power he's always wanted to use for good-_

...

She heard an alarm sound, klaxons echoing through the halls. A panicked voice came over the PA system. "All personnel, we have an emergency! You need to-"

The voice cut off, and the klaxons died out.

A false alarm?

Miss W looked at Victoria quizzically. As if she was somehow responsible. Victoria resented her for that. She was the inmate _least_ likely to cause a ruckus, but the asylum personnel had an ingrained habit of looking to the nearest parahuman for the source of trouble.

Sounds came from the hallway, people running and shouting. Then screams, a chorus of desperate screams cut short.

The nurse whispered. "Victoria. I don't know who got loose, but we have to sit tight and wait for the PRT. Try to suppress your aura if you can. We don't want to attract attention."

Victoria turned down her aura to its lowest setting and tried to hold herself still. She hated this. It was humiliating, _unworthy_ of her. She had been Glory Girl. A hero. Her response to trouble was to go out and _solve it_ , kick ass and throw the culprits in jail. Now it _hurt_ , an almost physical pain, to be in a crisis and unable to act.

But her hearts were racing for another reason. She had dreamed of this a thousand times. Was this her reward for keeping hope alive in her heart? Had her fantasies come true at last?

More sounds from the hallway. Wet snapping and ripping, like the sound of crab meat being cracked out of its shell.

Footsteps approached, and the door slowly creaked open-


	2. Apprehension

The door slowly creaked open. Two figures, a man and a child-

It was Them. Him and Her.

"And now, behind door number three, we find..." said Jack Slash.

"Wow! This one's pretty." said Bonesaw. "Like an angel. A flock of angels, all baked together in a big angel pie!"

 _No! Go away! Die!_

Victoria turned her aura on full blast. Miss Worthington collapsed to the floor at her side.

Jack staggered back into the hallway, as though he had been struck by a physical force, but managed to keep on his feet. He snarled and slashed with the butterfly knife in his hand. Victoria felt the blade skid ineffectually across her shield.

If she could move, if only she could move, she would _end_ him in a second if only she could move...

There was a sharp intake of breath. Bonesaw was transfixed, a beatific expression on her face.

"Oh. You're _beautiful_." she breathed.

Bonesaw scampered up to Victoria and touched her skin, her fingers brushing lightly against her shield in a gentle caress. Victoria wriggled, as much in loathing as in any attempt to get away.

"Are you natural or did someone make you? They must have been an artist. A virtuoso. Ohhh, look at you. You're an angel from heaven, captured in the moment you tried to take a human shape. A tribute to the potential of flesh."

Jack ground his teeth. Trying to resist the aura. "You're being influenced, Bonesaw. Your safeguards-"

"Yes, obviously, but it's nice. Angel girl, I _love_ your emotion effect, it makes you even more breathtaking and that's so, so fitting for you, honest! But be careful, please. If you make it any stronger you'll activate my Berserker mode and we don't want you to get yourself killed, do we?"

The little monster sounded genuinely concerned for her well being. Fuck her. The biotinker was probably the only cape in North America who could fix her, but the villain wouldn't-

Bonesaw clapped her hands. "Jack, I'm changing my pick!"

"Again? The tentacle woman isn't good enough for you?"

"She's beautiful too in her own way, alien like a deep sea squid or spider crab, but this girl is so, so... _me_. Like whoever made her was thinking of me when they did it, a tribute to my oeuvre. She's perfect." Bonesaw's gaze was still fixed on Victoria, entranced. "What's your name, angel? Can you speak?"

Victoria stayed as motionless as she could manage. The only show of defiance she could make. She hadn't made friends in the asylum, not exactly, but she'd felt a connection to the few patients who were as badly off as she was. She didn't want to think about what the Nine were doing to them.

Bonesaw addressed Miss W, still on her knees on the floor. "Can she speak? Communicate?"

The nurse didn't move, either. Paralyzed by her fear and the aura.

"Rude. You should answer when someone asks you nicely. If you do I promise I won't kill you. Cross my heart." Bonesaw crossed her arms over her chest.

The nurse stuttered. "C-can't talk. Blinking. Blinks. Yes or no, I write it down." She made a weak gesture to the whiteboard.

Bonesaw hummed. "Too bad. Blink talking is a pain. I could solve that, stitch you together and make you be her translator. But that would be a crass addition to a great work. Like tacking pants on Michaelangelo's David because you don't like to see his naughty bits. What's her name?"

"Vic-Victoria. Victoria Dallon." Her eyes flicked to Victoria. She mouthed the words. I'm sorry.

"Dallon, Dallon, I know that name. Jack, where do we know that name?"

"I'll give you a hint. It starts with a B."

"Boston? Brockton? Baltimore?"

"You've met her before. She lived with one of your candidates."

"Dallon, Dallon...oh. _Oh!_ " Bonesaw gasped, then she squealed. "Oh, wow! Panacea! You're Panacea's, Amelia's sister! But look at her, Jack, look at her look at her look at her now!"

"I am looking at her." Jack managed a strained smile. He was pressed against the wall in the hallway, as far away as he could stand while keeping Victoria in his line of sight, and there were tracks of sweat running down his face. "Miss Dallon, you'd best turn off your aura or things won't go well for you."

Fuck him. She kept it at maximum.

Bonesaw was vibrating with excitement. "I did it! I did it! I made Panacea break through her case of artist's block and become just like me!"

Jack cleared his throat. "You had some help, if I recall."

"Right, you helped too Jack, but look at what she left behind for me to find. She turned her own sister into a present for me, a tribute and a gift, look at her! She's Bonesaw fanfiction in the flesh."

Jack curled his lip. "Ah. _Fan_ fiction."

"Pssh! Not the dumb copycat kind, the awesome good-as-the-original kind. That means I've arrived as an artist, right? No one's ever done that for me before!"

Bonesaw ran her fingers through one of Victoria's heads of hair. "I'm so proud of your sister, Victoria! I knew she could make something amazing if she put her mind to it. I wish I could send her congratulations. Too bad she went to the Birdcage to be with her dad. I don't blame her, though. Family is important."

"It is." said Jack. "I confess, I don't see why you think this girl is special. She reminds me of your _juvenile_ work. Can't move her body, can't contribute to the team. A _failed_ experiment. I'm afraid you're letting her aura go to your head."

Bonesaw folded her arms. "She's _art_. She doesn't need to be for killing people. She's supposed to be beautiful, and she _is_ , she is so so beautiful. You can't see what I'm seeing with my power, the detail work on her body and brain. It'll take me _days_ to figure out how she works."

"Be that as it may, Miss Dallon won't be joining us. She'd never pass our tests. Look beyond the physical to the psychological. _Motivation_. We have leverage over our other recruits. We find the keystone of their lives and then we break it, or change it, or show them that joining us is the only path to preserve it. _This_ girl's keystone, however..." Jack tapped the whiteboard, the words Victoria had poured out of her heart to her sister. "...is in the Birdcage. One we can't easily reach."

"Then...then...she doesn't have to be a member. I'll keep her as a pet."

Jack sighed. "We've been over this, Bonesaw. Pets are acceptable but they have to contribute to the team. We're not a home for strays-"

Victoria couldn't stand to listen any longer. Two monsters deciding her future. As if she was nothing more than a toy to be played with and discarded when she broke.

But she refused to give up. Even trapped in her useless body, even trapped at the hands of villains, she refused to give up.

She had nothing to lose. Death would be a mercy, and even Bonesaw barely registered as a threat after what her sister did to her.

And she had everything to gain. The psychopaths were whimsical, unpredictable. There was a chance, a longshot but a very real chance, that she could convince them to help her escape her predicament. Bonesaw was one of the vanishingly few capes who could fix her broken body, and the girl had been charmed by her aura and her family name before she said a word.

Yes. The Nine were a threat, but they were also an _opportunity_.

She would have to use the new skills she'd learned in her months in the asylum. A desperate social finesse that she'd never needed as Glory Girl but was now her only means to survive. How to attune herself to subtle cues in her caretakers, how to choose her handful of words to reach their hearts and convince them agree to her requests.

A battle of will and wits, with villains as her opponents and stakes greater than life and death.

What would she say to get the villains to help her? A hazy memory rose up in her mind. A confrontation in a school. Bonesaw eager to collaborate with Amy, urging her to break her rules and make amazing and horrifying creations. Jack Slash tempting Amy to set herself free and indulge the monster in her heart. The outlines of an idea took shape...

Victoria wriggled and pulsed her aura, and Jack's gaze snapped to her. "Oh? It seems that Miss Dallon has an idea of her own. Go ahead. I'm interested to hear your proposal."

Bonesaw gasped and put a hand to her mouth. "Oh no, I'm sorry Victoria! I bet those doctors ignored you, talked about you like you weren't there, and here we are doing the same. I'll never do that to you again, I promise. Great artwork should speak for itself, right?"

It figured. The _doctors_ and _heroes_ looked at her with disgust in their eyes, listened to her words but didn't understand. But the _psychopaths_ said she was beautiful, understood her immediately, and were all ears.

That had happened to Amy, too. It must be a family thing.

Victoria couldn't express any of that, though, not yet. She fluttered her eyelids.

Bonesaw nodded. "Right, blink talk. Don't worry, Victoria. I run into that problem a lot too, when I paralyze my subjects, so I came up with my own system last month that has a much better bit rate than their dumb twentieth century blink codes. I'll teach it to to you, it's easy. Then you can tell us your idea."

It was, and she did.


	3. Insinuation

Victoria turned down her aura and studied the battered LCD screen mounted on Bonesaw's spiderbot. The screen was divided into three panels with letters and numbers. The top showed the vowels, AEIOUY. The middle was a list of consonants. The bottom was a cluster of numbers and punctuation marks and a symbol that must be a space.

Bonesaw pointed to the screen. "Short blink for top, double blink for middle, long blink for bottom. He auto-calibrates for your preferred blink lengths, so don't worry about the timing."

He? No, can't waste time thinking about the gory details of Bonesaw's abominations. Have to focus.

"When you choose one, he'll rearrange the letters you picked onto the three panels and repeat. Most likely on top, least likely on the bottom, based your writing style and other things. I wish I wrote that part of his code myself but it's outside my specialty. I cribbed it from a smartphone app." Bonesaw tapped the spiderbot on its torso. "Give her the training pattern."

A voice came out of the spiderbot, high-pitched with a childish lisp. "Please enter the pattern: I LOVE THE S9!"

Bonesaw giggled. "The evil brainwashing begins!"

As dire as her situation was, Victoria was tempted to roll her eyes at the obnoxiously cheesy recruitment attempt. If she had been capable of rolling her eyes with any level of precision. Instead she concentrated on learning the interface as if her life depended on it.

Two minutes later she had typed the pattern into the screen, only hitting a snag when the robot wouldn't let her finish the sentence until she ended it with an exclamation mark. When she finished, the spiderbot chirped the words out loud. "I LOVE THE S9!"

"Great job, Victoria!" said Bonesaw. "You learned faster than that Thinker in New Haven. You have more practice at blinking, I bet, but still."

Jack Slash came back into the room and leaned on the door frame. His knife was colored with a streak of blood. "Is she ready?"

"Yup." said Bonesaw. "What do you want to tell me, angel girl?"

Victoria typed out her message, blink by blink.

"MADE 4 U."

"Naturally." said Jack. "Amelia made you into _this_ to fulfill the terms of her promise." He raised an eyebrow. "I hope you'll tell us something we don't already know."

No. What she wanted them to think was-

"GIFT 4 U. BONES."

"A gift for me? I told you Jack, I told you! She's a tribute to my oeuvre. Panacea didn't like my art style at first but I convinced her, she came around!"

Jack chuckled. "Impressive, Bonesaw, if she's telling the truth. A thoughtful and beautiful gift. Unfortunately an impractical one. We can't carry her with us. She's bulky. Dead weight."

No. Not that. More blinks.

"COLLAB. HALF AMY HALF U."

"PUT ME TOGETHER."

"& SEND TO AMY IN BCAGE."

Bonesaw clapped her hands and broke into a broad smile. "Yes! I wondered why you were like that, all the little stuff beautiful but the big stuff jumbled up. It makes sense now! Panacea remembered what I told her. She's better at the detail work, I'm better at the big picture. So she gave me _you_ as a canvas, all the little pieces ready made for me so I can pick and choose and put them together any way I want.

"You're perfect! I thought you were half-done but you're a masterpiece with a _half-finished_ aesthetic, brimming with potential. And, and she even paralyzed you so you couldn't fly away when we came for you, a perfect invitation! Plus, she's trusting me with you, her sister, her own _family_! I won't let her down, I promise! My half will be just as good as hers!"

Victoria watched in disbelief. It was actually working. The tinker would probably turn her into even more of a monster, but she didn't care. She was already at rock bottom. As long as she could speak and eat and move she didn't care about the details.

There was one more obstacle to overcome. Jack Slash's expression had darkened with every upward tick in Bonesaw's smile.

"That's an awfully convenient story, Miss Dallon. Bonesaw has an opportunity to collaborate with her old candidate, but _only_ by repairing your body and sending you to the Birdcage to be with your sister." Jack tapped the whiteboard with Victoria's diary entry. "Precisely fulfilling your heart's desire. A coincidence?"

"YES."

Jack laughed, so sudden and loud that Victoria would have startled if she'd been able to move. He drew out his laugh for long seconds.

"I can't fault your audacity." he said. "Suppose I tell another story. Amelia indulges her power, reduces her sister to a pool of flesh to toy with at her whim...and then gets cold feet. The 'scaredy cat' is afraid of the freedom we showed her. She locks herself in the Birdcage to spare the world from her power." He leaned forward. "And to spare herself from seeing _you_ ever again. The worst of her mistakes."

A cold chill gripped Victoria's heart. He knew. The fear that set her off on confession binges in her diary, desperately reassuring Amy that she forgave her, so please please let her see her again so she could fix her-

"NO."

"I don't believe you. If Amelia is our Bonesaw's number one fan, why didn't she seek us out? Why did she lock herself in the most inconvenient place for us to visit?" Jack raised a knife, as if to slash her across one of her throats.

Victoria racked her mind for an answer, one with enough truth that it wouldn't set him off. Amy didn't go to the Birdcage to run away, it was because-

"AMY IS VILLAIN."

"WENT TO BE VILL WITH DAD."

"Hmm...no, no. I'm not seeing it. An Amelia reveling in her power wouldn't confine herself to a-"

"Geez louise, Jack! Why are you giving her a hard time?" interrupted Bonesaw.

"I'm concerned that she's lying to you, Bonesaw. Exploiting your goodwill to use you as a tool."

"Maaaybe. But she paints a pretty picture doesn't she? I want to see. If she believes her lies hard enough they might come true."

"Hmm. It's not unprecedented to accept a candidate who has ulterior motives. She'll have to pass the tests-"

Bonesaw huffed. "She's _not_ my candidate, I just want her as a pet. I'll tinker with her like I want, then I'll decide what to do with her after. Keep her or send her to her sister or whatever else."

Jack gave Victoria a triumphant grin as he sprung his trap. "Good idea, Bonesaw. Then you'll give Miss Dallon your standard control frame. Implants in the amygdala to keep her obedient, painswitch and killswitch for emergencies."

Victoria felt a chill. No. Not that. It was all for nothing if they turned her into one of those _things_.

Jack was watching her raptly, his eyes eager, waiting for her reaction. Fuck him. The bastard was enjoying this. A battle of wits with a crippled girl where he held all the cards. Sickening...

...but that was something she could use. She hastily blinked a message.

"JACK."

Jack grinned. "Second thoughts?"

"U TURNED AMY."

"MATCHED SET?"

"Ah. A challenge to corrupt you. Interesting." Jack rubbed his chin. "Convenient for you, again. Your Amelia broke her rules of her own free will, so you hope I'll extend you the same courtesy."

Jack gestured with his knife. "But the two of you are entirely different. Amelia was _afraid_ of her freedom. She knew she was a monster inside, papered over with a thin veneer of self-deception."

He pointed his knife at her. " _You_ see yourself as a hero to the core. Incorruptible. You're asking us to leave your free will intact because you're certain you'll win this game. Not interested."

Victoria thought back to a half-dozen panicked arguments with Amy in alleyways and side streets. Standing over the broken bodies of Empire thugs, the pavement spattered with their blood.

"AMY SAID IM BIGGER MONSTER."

"Oh? I doubt you've killed a single man in your life."

"AMY NEVER KILLED."

"Mmm. I have it on good authority that she's a killer, but that's beside the point. This isn't about your sister. This is about _you_. What would be a suitable test of your sincerity...?"

Jack's eyes wandered around the room, then lit on the still form of her nurse. Miss Worthington, Miss W. She was cowering in the corner, crouching with her face turned away from the capes. Like an ostritch burying her head in the sand in the hopes the lions would forget her.

Fuck him.

Bonesaw tore her eyes from Victoria and followed his gaze. "Oh! Good idea Jack. I can walk her through her first kill, just like I did with her sister."

Fuck her.

"Um, she can't move, can't fly...let's see..." Bonesaw fished in the pocket of her apron, picked out a vial and tilted it in the light. "Oh! Turn down your aura for a minute, okay Victoria?"

Bonesaw fiddled with her tools, then approached Miss W and jabbed her with a needle. The nurse saw it coming too late, and recoiled in pain and fear.

"What-what was that?" she cried out.

"Ssh, ssh, calm down." said Bonesaw. "It's harmless as long as you stay calm. I promised, I won't kill you."

Miss W stared at her.

"But if you get super duper excited some time in the next ten minutes, if your sympathetic nervous system is activated more than a certain amount, then it'll go into overdrive. You'll get twitchy and panting, then your heart will try to beat so fast it can't keep up, and then you'll have a seizure and die."

A tear ran down Miss W's cheek.

"I set the threshold pretty high. You can't get that excited on your own. You'd need something special. Like, say, if you were afraid you were going to die, and then Victoria here turned her aura up to its maximum setting..."

Bonesaw looked at Victoria, an expectant half-smile on her lips.

Miss W leapt to her feet and ran. Jack slammed the door shut and jabbed at the lock mechanism with his knife. Miss W ran into the door full force, then struggled futilely to unlock it. She pounded on the door, then spun and stared at Victoria, eyes wide. "Please, don't. It's not worth it."

Victoria silently thought. _I'm sorry. You know what they do to prisoners. This is a mercy._

"You're-you're a hero, Victoria. Glory Girl. Heroes don't-"

Victoria turned up her aura to maximum strength.

Miss W shrieked, leaped so high she nearly hit the ceiling. She spun and pounded at the door, harder than before, as if she thought she could tear a hole through it with brute physical strength.

Jack grabbed her from behind and restrained her. He crooned to her in an attempt at a soothing voice, a ragged edge to his words betraying that he was feeling the aura's effects as well. "Ssh, ssh, calm down, calm down. Just stay calm and you'll be all right."

She babbled, the words spilling out of her, disjointed. "I can't, I can't, I, I feel, it's too much-"

Victoria wished she could turn away but she forced herself to keep her eyes open. She couldn't afford to show weakness here or it would all be for nothing. She felt her eyes water.

Jack continued to mutter softly in Miss W's ear and used a hand to gently stroke her arm. Her teeth were chattering now, her words running together, her hands opening and closing convulsively. "I feel it, I feel, I feel-" she gasped for air, "I feel oh god I feel its too much its too its oh god stop stop stop stop!"

She broke into a frenzy of motion, tearing herself from Jack's grasp and pushing him to the ground. She screamed at the top of her lungs and threw herself onto Victoria's body, beating her with her hands and feet, her blows pounding ineffectively against her shield.

She struggled for a minute before she began to weaken. Her breathing became labored, her screams slackened and turned into heaving gasps for air. Her blows lost their coordination and degenerated into a full-body spasm that left her stretched out and stiff, every muscle tense and twitching.

And then she was dead.

Victoria stared at Miss Worthington's body. She didn't have a choice. The body was covering half of her eyes, and some of them were eyes she couldn't close. A close and personal view of the first life she had ever taken.

It was official. She was a criminal now. A murderer. A villain.

She became aware of a sound. Bonesaw clapping. "Awesome! You killed her with your sheer awesomeness! Great job, I've never seen that before! You did better than your sister. More dramatic, and you did it with your eyes open. I can keep her, right Jack?"

The spiderbot clambered onto Victoria's body and looked at one of her eyes. Victoria turned down her aura and blinked a message.

"PROMISING?"

Jack gave her a rakish grin. "You have my attention, Miss Dallon."

"Yay!" Bonesaw cheered. She patted Victoria on her flank. "You're coming to live with us, now. I'll take good care of you, I promise."

Jack destroyed the lock on the door with three precise jabs of. his knife and swept it open with a flourish. "Bonesaw, as intriguing as your new pet is, it isn't fair to give her all of our attention. We musn't neglect the others."

"Oh! Right!" Bonesaw rubbed one of Victoria's heads of hair. "I have to go test the candidates but I'll be back to pick you up. Be a good girl and sit tight, 'kay?" She gave Victoria a kiss on her closest forehead. "Bye bye for now!"

The villains strolled into the hallway. Victoria was left alone with the nurse's limp body draped across her own. A corpse sleeping on a living mattress of flesh.

It was sick. It was wrong. It made her stomachs turn.

But deep inside she felt an intoxicating sense of freedom. For the first time in months she had chosen her own destiny.

 _Amy. I'm a killer now, too. Maybe I'm closer to you than I thought. I'm breaking out of this prison of flesh you made for me. No matter what it takes._


	4. Promises

_Two days later._

 _..._

"You're free to go." said Jack Slash.

Victoria stared at him. He was leaning against a tree in the forest clearing, his pose relaxed, his tone nonchalant.

Jack smiled. "Oh? Do you think I'm joking? I assure you, I'm not a joker. Not about matters dear to the heart of one of my teammate's treasured pets."

Victoria blinked, a series of blinks tapping out a message in code. The spiderbot that Bonesaw had assigned to her watched her closely, translating her blinks and and displaying her message letter by letter on its battered LCD screen. When the message was complete the robot spoke, in the lisping high-pitched voice of a child.

"WHY?"

Jack raised an eyebrow. "Why not? You asked for your freedom and now you have it. If Bonesaw had wanted her precious pet to be a prisoner or a servant, rest assured she would have made you one."

Victoria turned, using her newly repaired flight to rotate her body in the air, and aimed her leftmost pair of eyes at Bonesaw. The child tinker was kneeling on the edge of the forest clearing, repairing one of her spiderbots. She looked up and nodded seriously.

"He's right, Victoria. I haven't figured out your biology well enough to start fixing your body yet, so I can't give you a control frame. But I could have paralyzed you, or kept you asleep, or wrapped you up in a-"

Jack cleared his throat. "Yes, yes. We didn't free you from your prison only to place you in another. We'd be pleased if you choose to stay and help Bonesaw complete your new body, but-"

"You promised!" said Bonesaw. "I saw how happy you were to fly again. Your aura was _vibrating_ like a song from your heart. So cute! Imagine what it'll feel like to sing and dance again for real!"

Victoria closed her eyes. She _could_ imagine it. It was all too easy. Every night for months she had dreamed of being normal again, only to wake up in the asylum in the broken body her traitor sister had given her. She had taken to sleeping ten hours a day. Even her worst dreams had been a blessed relief from the nightmare that was her reality. This was her only chance to make the nightmare end.

"Yes, Miss Dallon did give you her word. I'm curious to see if she'll keep it." said Jack.

"Of course she will!" protested Bonesaw. "Just like her sister kept her promise to us. A promise is a promise."

Victoria hastily blinked another message. She had to stay on their good side. Whatever it took.

"WILL STAY."

"Good, good. I'd like you to consider your plans carefully. You've suffered more than most, and as you might imagine I'm very familiar with damaged people. It would be natural for you to fixate on your past. To make a futile attempt to return to your career as a hero-"

"NO."

"Is that so." Jack eyed her skeptically. "I encourage you to see this as an opportunity. A fresh start. You're no longer tied to the family who betrayed you, to the heroic ideals of morality you learned from the society that abandoned you. You can follow your _own_ desires, maybe for the first time in your life. Your first taste of true freedom."

Jack took a moment to study her, as though he could read the language of her inhuman body. Then he smiled.

"Your new freedom means that you have a decision to make. You want to go to your sister Amelia. But Amelia is in the Birdcage, and the authorities don't let just anyone inside. You have to commit a crime to match. You have to do something truly reprehensible. Make innocent souls squirm and the common man cry out for your blood.

"Your _Amelia_ passed their test with flying colors. She mutilated a certain famous teenage heroine, brainwashed and abused her, then threatened to destroy the world with a tide of unstoppable plagues that would put our Bonesaw to shame. Which brings us to _your_ decision.

"What crime will you commit, Victoria Dallon, to earn your place in the Birdcage?"

Victoria froze, or the equivalent of freezing in her changed body. Two of her hands began to twitch outside of her control.

She had known this was coming. They wanted to seduce her to a life of villainy, to make her do it of her own free will, and they had the perfect tool for leverage. She had told herself she would do anything to see Amy again. But going through with it, stooping to her sister's level, that was another matter entirely. She blinked a message, longer this time, and the spiderbot faithfully spoke it aloud.

"I HELP BONESAW FIX ME."

Jack clucked his tongue. " _Think_ , Miss Dallon. Yes, you'll need to collect a few dozen subjects for Bonesaw to complete her work, but any court of law would say you were coerced, if not legally insane after what your sister did to you. They won't hold you responsible for your actions, for _any_ action you take to end the torment of living as you are now."

He took a step forward, took out one of his knives and ran a finger along the blade. "You'll have to do something more. Something creative. Something fitting for your personality, to prove to them it's really _you_ at the helm."

Victoria shrank under his stare. She couldn't find the words. She knew he wouldn't be satisfied with a simple promise of a massacre. The psychopath wanted something to fit his twisted imagination. She finally blinked a message.

"DON'T KNOW."

Jack frowned. "Disappointing. I don't believe you, Miss Dallon. I know your type. You had _months_ in the asylum to ruminate over your grievances. You fantasized every day, every hour, about how you would revenge yourself on the people who wronged you."

It was true. Victoria closed her eyes and the memories came back to her. Dark, twisted fantasies, ones she never would have believed she was capable of imagining until something equally dark and twisted had been done to her. Her traitor mother dissolving into a pool of flesh, screaming and begging for mercy until her tongue turned to mush-

Jack grew a satisfied smile. "Yes, I thought so. You thought they were impossible dreams but now you're free to make them real. As one killer to another, I'd like to hear the fates you have in store for them. I'm sure you have a favorite."

Victoria kept her eyes closed tight. She wished she could block out his words. But she didn't have a choice, she needed to impress him to survive. She called her most twisted fantasies to her mind and tried to bring back the mindset she'd had when she created them. That sense of righteous vengeance, supreme satisfaction in making them suffer-

"Hey, Jack, enough talking." interrupted Bonesaw. "It's not fair. She's _my_ pet. She doesn't have to decide this minute."

Victoria felt a pang of gratitude for the tinker's attention to her feelings. Then she immediately hated herself for it. Responding to her handler's affection like a trained dog.

Jack opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. He turned to Bonesaw. "Of course. She's your pet. By the same token, it will be _your_ responsibility if she runs away. You need to learn to take care of your pets properly. Consider your side project here a test run for our grand performance."

Bonesaw frowned.

Victoria caught the undercurrent of his words. Games within games. He was letting her off lightly for the sake of a game he was playing with Bonesaw. That was fine with her. She'd take any advantage she could get.

"...Fine. I'll take good care of her, I promise." said Bonesaw. The tinker crossed the clearing, her hands red and black with streaks of blood and machine oil. "Victoria, it's time for you to help me like you promised. I want to get started on your throats first so you can talk and eat properly again. I'm tired of this blink talk, I want to hear your voice!

"Go pick out a girl for me and bring her back here. One your age with a nice voice. A natural blonde if you can get it, though I can always change that later. And don't get seen doing it, of course. Okay, Victoria?"

Victoria blinked a message. Her eyelids were fluttering, not quite under her control, and the message came out scrambled. The spiderbot reported it faithfully nonetheless, its lisping voice stumbling over the words.

"OK AY YYES."

"Good girl!" cheered Bonesaw. She put a hand on Victoria's front forehead and ruffled her hair. "Hey, when I fix your voice we can have some quality time together. I'll set up a campfire and marshmallows and we'll have a sing-along. Do you know the Bananaphone Song? Or Love Bug?"

Victoria arched her back. A 'nod'.

"Great! Something to look forward to!" Bonesaw gave her a kiss on the forehead, then pointed into the trees. "Nearest town is that way, three miles. Now fetch!"

Victoria took off, rising above the trees and flying away from them as fast as she could. She heard Jack's voice echoing behind her, "Happy hunting!"

And then there were only the sounds of the forest, and the wind in her ears. Alone with her own thoughts.

By all rights she should feel a sense of satisfaction. She had done the impossible and convinced the Nine to help her. Made Bonesaw think of her as a gift from Amy, an unfinished artwork for the tinker to complete and send to the Birdcage in a twisted kind of artist's exchange.

Now she could _fly_ again, as fast and true as ever. She could even use fine adjustments of her flight to make up for her lack of motor control. She could arch and twist her body, stretch herself out, or curl up her folds of flesh like a carpet. With enough awkward writhing she could even force food and water down her throat, if she wanted to feed herself and she didn't mind making a mess.

It was sinful how good it felt to have even this small measure of control over her body. After months as a paralyzed cripple the freedom was intoxicating.

But her joy was shot through with dread. Now was the time to fulfill her half of the deal.

Jack saw their deal as a game, a challenge to corrupt her to villainy in the same way he had done to her sister. And he had the perfect leverage to do it. Bonesaw needed raw materials to work with. Fresh bodies that Victoria had promised to collect for her.

Every step she took to fix her broken body would have to be paid for in the flesh and blood of innocents.

It was...far, far too tempting. The old Victoria, the _Glory Girl_ she used to be, would have rejected it out of hand, but now...

Jack Slash had asked her, on her first day traveling with the Nine. Why had she become a hero, and not a villain?

Her ready answer was what Glory Girl told the newspaper reporters. She was an altruist. She wanted to save lives, to help the weak, to stop the villains. But in her new form, having to speak by blinking, she had time to think and be honest with herself.

Why had she become a hero? All too many reasons. Because of the expectations of others. Because Carol and Mark insisted on it as a family tradition. Because it gave her praise and fame and glory. Because it made her feel righteous, untouchable, the best of the best. Because her family had money, so she was never tempted to turn to crime to make ends meet. Because she didn't have a choice, because even if she wanted to rob a bank she couldn't hide it from her parents.

Altruism, saving lives, helping the weak...had they ever even been on the list?

 _Amy_ had always been the altriust. Going to the hospital to heal patients in her free time, even when she was burned out and didn't feel it anymore. And the altruistic Amy had always said that _Victoria's_ motivations were impure. Six times Amy had saved her from being arrested, by healing the suspects she had nearly killed when she went too far.

If Amy was here, she would say that Victoria was _already_ a criminal months ago. A violent felon, an attempted murderer, who used her power to break the law and used her family connections to escape the punishment she deserved.

If Amy was here, if Amy was here-

The undying spark of love that Amy had planted in her mind flared bright and hot.

 _Come to me. Love me. I'll love you. I'll hold you. I'll care for you. I'll fix you._

Victoria would have screamed if she had a voice. No. Traitor. You betrayed me. You couldn't fix me when it counted. Your fault.

 _It was my fault. I'm sorry. I locked myself in the Birdcage as a penance. Come to me. I'll get down on my knees and beg for your forgiveness. I'll do anything to make it up to you. I need you. I need to hear your voice and feel your touch. Just like you need mine._

Victoria jammed her eyes shut, the eyes she could close, but her others stayed open and showed her the forest flying by beneath her as she drew nearer and nearer to the town where she would find her first victim. Amy wouldn't want her to become a villain. If Amy was here-

 _I forgive you. It's my fault. It's what I did to you. Come to me. I'll bear your sins. I'll give you all the revenge you could ever want. I'll give you all the love you could ever want. I'll give you anything. I'll give you everything. I'll make you whole again._

She couldn't escape. Couldn't shut her eyes, couldn't shut her mind, couldn't make a sound, couldn't clear her head-

Victoria dove into the forest and smashed herself full-force into the treeline. Branches snapped and fell around her but she barely felt it through her shield.

She hit a tree trunk, a solid obstacle almost as wide as her body. She felt something, that time. There was a tremendous _crack_ as the trunk broke apart, the upper half toppling to the ground with a crash that echoed through the forest.

She felt a little better, her mind a little clearer. It wasn't enough. She took aim at the nearest tree and began again, ramming it at full speed and sending it crashing to the forest floor. Then another. Then another. Then another.

She exerted herself for fifteen minutes before she stopped. She had made a clearing more than three hundred feet wide.

It felt good. Exhilerating. Freeing. To use her powers for the first time in months. To have a meaningful impact on the world, to express herself, even if what she was expressing was a primal rage to tear down the scenery.

Victoria hovered in the air, upside down to turn the majority of her eyes to the ground. Surveying the wreckage.

 _This is what I am, now._

She caught a hint of motion out of the corner of one of her eyes. White on brown.

She sped after the motion, weaving between the trees in her way until she caught up with the source. They were deer. A mother and two children, fleeing from her commotion. The mother was panicking, repeatedly running ahead and then doubling back to stay close to her children. Protecting them.

The sight filled her with unexpected emotion. Nostalgia. Longing. And then... _rage_. An image of her mother passed through her mind, standing over her and Amy with a furious glint in her eye. Disapproval. Judgement. When she had no right. It was _her_ fault they were screwed up like this and she had abandoned them when they needed her the most and-

Victoria flew above the deer and smashed herself down onto the mother, enveloping the deer completely and mashing her into the dirt.

The children ran off and disappeared into the forest. She ignored them.

She pushed down on the mother as hard as she could with her flight, grinding its struggling body into the forest floor. She found herself losing track of time, losing herself in the moment, until all there was in the world was herself and the struggling animal under her power, warm and alive and pressing itself against her skin and shield.

After an interminable time, the deer's stuggles weakened. Then slowed. Then stopped.

The deer was dead.

Victoria hovered above the corpse. The deer was half-buried in the forest floor, covered in dirt and twigs and leaves. Its body was limp in an unnatural posture, two legs splayed at angles where she had broken them. There was a trail of blood leaking from the deer's mouth staining the dirt bright red.

 _This is what I am, now._

The sense of clarity and exhileration filled her again, stronger than before.

The world wasn't supposed to work this way. It felt deeply _wrong_. The deer was supposed to be vibrant and alive and taking care of its children, not still and lifeless and cold. There were supposed to be safeguards, paperwork, laws, justice, heroism, _something_ to defend the innocent creatures from harm.

And yet there had been nothing, not even the slightest resistance. It had been so easy. The work of a few minutes. She could do it again and again and again if she wanted. And the forest was so peaceful and quiet now. No consequences, no retribution, no mother to scold her, no divine punishment from the heavens to make her pay for her sin.

Had it ever been any different? It had been the same when she killed Miss Worthington in the asylum. It had been the same when the world killed her own old self, at the hands of her sister and Crawler's venom. It had been the same when the villains had killed Aunt Fleur, when Leviathan had killed Uncle Neil and Cousin Eric and turned Dad into a husk one step away from a vegetable. It had _always_ been like this.

A revelation. Seeing her history through a new lens. It all made sense, it all hung together.

Maybe this was the way the world was meant to be.

A dead certainty filled her. A sense of relief, an answer to a question she hadn't asked. She knew, without a doubt, that she could have any revenge she wanted on this world that had destroyed her. No one could stop her. All she had to do was reach out and take it.

And yet...

...she felt empty.

The body of the deer was pitiful. Sad and alone, half-buried in the ground. Its children would never come back to pay their respects. Its death was meaningless. A vain attempt by a broken girl to fill the emptiness inside her.

A lonely corpse in the forest.

 _Is this all I'm going to be?_

Victoria hovered above the clearing for half an hour. Upside down, watching the corpse with as many eyes as she could, until the insects came to reclaim its body for the forest.

By the time she left the clearing, she had made her decision.


	5. Two Paths

Victoria hovered in the clearing for half an hour. Watching the deer's corpse, still and silent and half-buried in the earth, until the insects came to reclaim its body for the forest.

By the time she left the clearing, her mind was clear...

...

 **Love Path**

Victoria came to a decision. She would _never_ become a monster like the Nine. They were empty. With nothing to live for, no one to love, only the pleasure of exercising their powers, it was no wonder they turned to aimless slaughter.

She would never be empty. There was one anchor she would never lose. The gift of undying _love_ her sister had given her.

She knew it wasn't...natural. She hated it more than anything. She couldn't think of a crueler fate than being forced to love the traitor who violated her mind and disfigured her. But her sister's gift was too strong, too much a fundamental part of her to remove.

Abandoning her love wasn't an option. She could love, and fight that love in an endless struggle, kindle a flame of _hate_ to balance it until her head was perfectly clear again and her heart was perfectly empty. Or...she could love, and put her own will behind that love, make it strong and pure and overwhelming until her doubts were gone and love filled the whole of her heart.

When she thought of it like that, there was only one choice she could make.

 _I'm coming for you, Amy. Whatever it takes._

...

 **Silver Path**

Victoria came to a decision. She would _never_ become a monster like the Nine. They pretended to offer her freedom but what they really offered was _surrender_. To give up on life and surrender to her powers like they had done, using her power without restraint to destroy, destroy, destroy, until they tore down the world.

She was being suffocated by the expectations of others. Her sister expected her to surrender to her desires and come crawling back to the traitor who disfigured her. Her doctors expected her to surrender to her life as a useless blob of flesh and be a docile patient for their convenience. Her family expected her to surrender to their rejection and quietly fade away so they could forget she ever existed.

And now the Nine expected her to surrender to her dark side, and indulge the twisted desires the world had inflicted on her.

Never. She refused to surrender. She wasn't like them. She was a _fighter_. She used to be a physical fighter, taking down criminals with strength and speed and sheer intimidation. Then she was locked in the asylum and learned to be a mental fighter. She kept her spark of hope alive for months, sheltering it from the unnatural desires and revenge fantasies and loneliness that scoured her mind, until the day she used it to win her freedom. She hadn't given up then, and she wouldn't give up now.

When she thought of it like that, there was only one choice she could make.

 _I'm free now. There's nothing to stop me. I'm going to be what I always wanted to be._

 _..._

 _..._

 _Author's note:_ This is a branching point. The next chapters will follow both paths, the results of Victoria's decisions.


	6. Love Path

Victoria Dallon had been free of the Slaughterhouse Nine for an hour, and it already felt like an eternity.

She was hovering in an alleyway behind a fast food restaurant, looking for food in the dumpsters. It was humiliating. She was hungry, her stomachs rumbling, but she couldn't buy food like a normal person anymore. She didn't have money, for one. And with the form her sister had given her, civilians would panic and run instead of trying to communicate.

All she needed was a meal to energize herself and then she would be free to escape. It would take her less than an hour to fly back to the heroes and tell them where the villains were hiding. None of the Nine were fast enough to follow her if she went at her maximum speed, not even their new teleporter. The locals wouldn't recognize her, but if she went to a city the heroes would look her up in their database and know they could trust her.

The question was...if she went back to the heroes, could she trust _them_?

Victoria had a sinking feeling that she knew exactly what would happen. The heroes would congratulate her for escaping the Nine, praise her for her heroism in bringing back intelligence...and then put her in an asylum again, a _worse_ one now that their best had been turned into a slaughterhouse.

It wasn't fair. She had been a hero for years. Saved countless lives, put her life on the line to save her city from an Endbringer and the Nine. Her good deeds were supposed to matter, to make a difference, but...

Her life as a hero was closed to her, now. Her parents had disowned her, called her a _mockery_. Her sister had turned into a villain and sent herself to the Birdcage. And she herself was a monster, created and mindscrewed by her villain sister, then manipulated again by the Slaughterhouse Nine. A murderer who killed her innocent caretaker for her selfish desires.

No, there was no way the heroes would touch her. They hated her, despised her, feared her. Even acknowledging her existence to the public would be a PR disaster.

That must have been why Jack Slash had been chuckling at her yesterday, when he saw her shivering with delight during her first, tentative flight with her restored power. The way that right and wrong were flipped around. Only two days with the Nine and she had gained more freedom than she had for months. But one single day with the heroes and they would shut her away for the rest of her life.

There was only one thing in the world she wanted, one single thing, and the heroes would never give it to her.

Which meant she couldn't go back to the heroes yet. There was something she had to do, first.

It was another hour before she found what she was looking for. A group of high school girls walking home, chatting and laughing in bright and vibrant voices, still wearing their uniforms from cheer practice. A painful reminder of the kind of person she had been before her sister took that life away from her.

Victoria followed them from a distance, keeping the bulk of her body hidden in alleyways and crevices and letting only a pair or two of her eyes into the open to watch them. Over the next fifteen minutes the group split up, girls leaving one by one. Then there were only two left, one with long dark hair and another with blonde hair cropped at shoulder length. The two said their goodbyes and split up, walking in opposite directions. She followed the blonde.

The girl walked faster now that she was alone. After a few minutes she made a turn toward a house and walked to the door, taking a wallet out of her pocket and fiddling with the keys.

It was now or never. Victoria closed her eyes for a moment, steeling herself for what she had to do.

 _I'm doing this for you, Amy. You couldn't fix me so I'll get it done myself. Whatever it takes._

Victoria curled up her body and flew out of cover, keeping low to the ground and coming up behind the girl at fifteen miles an hour. She hit the girl in the back of the legs and knocked her off balance. Before the girl could fall to the ground, Victoria unrolled herself to her full extent underneath the girl, cushioning her fall like a mattress. Then Victoria quickly curled herself up again to half-wrap the girl in her body, an organic blanket of faces, limbs, and gentle curves of flesh.

The girl screamed and began to struggle. But Victoria was tough, durable, and she could fly. She lifted into the air, carrying the girl like a magic carpet.

They were ten feet in the air by the time the girl let out her first scream, fifty feet up by the time the girl rose to her knees, and two hundred feet up by the time the girl looked over the edge and realized her predicament. Escaping Victoria's grip would mean falling to her death.

Then the girl registered the soft tissue under her hands, and looked down to see the nature of the magic carpet she was riding. She fainted dead away.

Five minutes of travel at sixty miles an hour brought her to her destination. A clearing in the woods, far from prying eyes.

Bonesaw was waiting. The tinker was fussing with her surgical tools, up to her elbows in the guts of one of the creatures she had made from the asylum patients who failed the tests. She looked up at Victoria and broke into a bright smile.

"You came back, Vicky!"

Victoria flared her aura.

"Right. Sorry. Victoria." Bonesaw started again. "Ahem. You came back, Victoria! And you brought a friend. You're taking my deal, then?"

Victoria deposited the girl on the ground. Bonesaw snapped her fingers and pointed. One of her spiderbots injected the girl with a syringe.

Bonesaw inspected the girl with a critical eye. "Hmm, good choice. Reminds me of your old body. Pick a meatier one next time if you can." She pried open one of the girl's eyelids, used a finger to roll the eye in its socket to get a look at the iris. "Eye color isn't quite right, but I can fix that."

Victoria wanted to turn away from the pitiful scene, but she made herself watch. The girl deserved at least that much.

She hated herself for doing this. It was easy to make excuses. Any court in the country would find her not guilty by reason of insanity. It wasn't her fault. She never had a choice. It was the world that had forsaken her, it was her sister's violation of her mind and body, it was the useless doctors who couldn't help her and the psychopath who could, it was all their fault it had come to this.

She would _never_ let herself become like the Nine. She would never take a life lightly. She would never break minds and bodies for pleasure. She would only take lives for a worthy cause.

And she _knew_ her cause was worthy, deep down to the core of her soul. It wasn't a just cause. It wasn't right, or fair, or heroic. But it was all she had left to live for.

 _I love you, Amy. I'm doing this for you. No matter what it takes._

"One won't be enough, you know." said Bonesaw. "I'll need lots and lots of raw material to build you a proper body and get your nerves working. Your sister made you a beautiful canvas, brimming with potential, and I promise I'll do you justice. I'll make you a masterwork.

"To make up for the time I spend on you, you'll be in charge of bringing me my raw material for the next month or so, for you and my other projects. You'll have to take care of your own food and water, too. And no nipping into my stash again! Those are the _rules_. If you're not going to join us as a member, you have to take care of yourself like a proper pet."

Victoria used her flight to arch her body. A 'nod'.

"Jack said I have to make extra sure you understand. This is your choice, your idea. Just like what your sister did to you was _her_ idea. I'm not controlling you. You can choose to leave at any time. Okay?"

Another 'nod'.

"But you're not going to leave, you're going to stay and help me finish my collaboration with your sister. You don't want to be half-finished when you go to the Birdcage for your family reunion, right?"

Another 'nod'.

"Great! She'll love it, I promise. Your sister made you an angel, now I'll make you a _goddess_."

Bonesaw scampered forward and hugged Victoria, then fondly rubbed one of her heads of hair. It took everything she had not to squirm. She pretended it was her sister's arms around her. That helped, a little.

 _I'm coming for you, Amy. No matter what it takes._

Bonesaw snapped her fingers. One of her spiderbots leaped onto her arm and reconfigured itself into an array of surgical tools, scalpels and needles and whirring drill bits. The tinker grinned. "Let's get started."

...  
...

The one-way elevator to the Birdcage was small, cramped, and completely airtight. Victoria used more oxygen than a normal person, and she was feeling lightheaded by the time it came to a halt. A mechanical voice sounded over the intercom.

"Prisoner seven one two, Victoria Dallon, AKA Glory Girl, AKA Ladykiller. Cell block F."

The door opened, and Victoria got her first look at her fellow inmates.

There was a group of women off to her right, all wearing the same plain gray uniforms. Dragon had assigned her to Black Kaze's block. That must be the small Japanese woman at the front of the group, her subordinates leaving a respectful space around her. Her right hand was at her side, tightly clenching and unclenching on an improvised metal spike that she held like a sheathed sword.

But in front of her were the people Victoria came to see. Marquis, the leader of cell block W. He looked different from his file photo, older, with streaks of gray in his hair. His face was lined with creases, but at the same time he looked less wild, more relaxed. As if he had found a new peace.

Jack Slash had told her stories about Marquis. The man was a murderer with a strict moral code. He refused to kill women and could be trusted to keep his word. Like father, like daughter. That would work in her favor, now.

And by his side was a girl, brown-haired and freckled, studying her with wide eyes. His daughter.

"Amy." said Victoria. Savoring the word on her lips. Then she she smiled and turned on her aura full blast, smiled wider as she saw the subordinates back away. Only her sister and the cell block leaders stood their ground. For a long moment she simply basked in Amy's presence and spread her arms wide, showing off her new body.

She knew she looked...different. The little parts, the details like eyes and mouths and hands, she had more. Some of them were Bonesaw's but the rest of them were _hers_. The ones Amy had given her, preserved and relocated, restored to their old functions and given new ones. She still had every single one of the eyes her sister had given her, every single mouth and heart and head of hair.

But those were the details. Unimportant in the grand scheme of things. The important thing was that she was _fixed_. Just as Bonesaw had promised.

She was bigger than before, nearly eight feet tall, but she had two arms again, two legs, one torso. She could stand, she could run, she could _dance_. She could move her arms and hands and fingers in any way she liked, to caress or to crush, to make love or war or anything in between. She had the same shape and the same curves and the same sweet voice she had always had, the ones Amy had fallen in love with once upon a time. The same ones she would love again, now.

Amy was different, too. Her face looked older, creased with worry-lines, and the sleeves of her uniform were cut to show off the tattoos that covered her arms. Most prominent among them was a golden sun on her right arm, just under her shoulder. Its rays shone in all directions and made her arm appear as though it was shot through with lines of gold.

A tattoo for her. She knew it. The world had forsaken her, locked her up and tried to forget her, but Amy, Amy, _Amy_ remembered her. Remembered her so deeply she had etched her memories onto her skin, to be sure she wouldn't forget her for even a moment.

Amy was frozen now, her eyes wide, her expression unreadable. Victoria realized that Amy must be paralyzed with joy. Joy at seeing her beloved sister again, her sister who she thought she had ruined with her own hands, now returned in a miracle, alive and whole and shining once more like the sun.

Victoria spoke, in the same sweet voice she had long ago.

"Amy. You left me alone, up there, but I came for you. I'm sorry I kept you waiting. Do you forgive me?"

Amy stared at her, her jaw open, her lips moving silently as she tried and failed to find the words. Then, with tears flowing down her cheeks, Amy stepped forward into her open arms.

...

...

Author's note: End of the Love Path. Happy end? Next chapter is the alternate, Silver Path.


	7. Silver Path, Part 1

Victoria flew above the town, scanning the streets and the horizon in the distance. She followed the flow of traffic to get her bearings, then started down the highway at maximum speed.

The people below pointed and shouted and panicked. She ignored them. Her aura was probably making the commotion worse, but she couldn't spare the concentration to tamp it down.

She was free now, physically free, but the battle she needed to win was a mental one. Everything inside of her, every feeling that had festered in her gut for months in the asylum, was screaming at her to turn back.

...

 _The Nine lied to you. They didn't set you free. Bonesaw put a trap inside you. A time limit on your flight or a slow poison or something worse. Go back to them now or you'll fall to earth and become a helpless vegetable for the rest of your life._

I don't care. I'm not going back. I'll never be a monster like them!

 _Why return to the world that abandoned you? No one loves you. Your family betrayed you. The heroes don't trust you. The doctors treat you like a toy. There's nothing in this world to live for._

The world betrayed me but I'll be damned if I betray myself. I'm not a murderer's pet toy. I'm Victoria Dallon. I'm _Glory Girl_. I'm a hero. If I can't live as a hero, then I'll suffer and die as one.

I'm not a coward like Amy-

...

Victoria shuddered. A flare of heat pulsed deep inside her brain. The undying spark of love her wonderful, terrible sister had planted in her mind.

 _Amy_. The only person in the world who loved her. The only person in the world she loved.

...

 _Please, Vicky. I love you. I'm here for you, waiting for you. Come to me. We'll be together again, like we were always meant to be._

Liar! You weren't there for me when it counted. You abandoned me with the rest of the traitors.

 _I had to go to the Birdcage to keep you safe. It's where monsters like me belong. Now you're a monster too, but I forgive you for everything. It's not your fault. Come to me and I'll do anything to make it right. I'll grovel on my knees for you. I'll die for you. I'll love you. I love you._

I don't want your love! I used to respect you. You were my moral guide. Now you're so twisted you'll forgive me for murder. You're not my Amy anymore. Rot in the Birdcage for all I care!

 _Please. I'm sorry I made you into a monster. It tears at my heart every day. Let me fix you. Let me hold you. You need me. They all abandoned you but I love you. I'm the only one who'll ever love you. I'm the only one you'll ever love. Come to me and we'll make each other whole again._

You're wrong. One day I'll beat this curse you put on me. But even if I don't, I'm stronger than you. You couldn't face your fears and ran away so you wouldn't have to see me again. Coward. Pathetic. You're not worthy of my love.

I'm going to do what's right, even if I lose my body and mind. No matter what it takes.

...

Victoria was roused from her warring emotions as she arrived at her destination. The burned-out husk of a building where the Nine had freed her two days ago.

The Asylum.

She almost turned back then and there. She forced herself to draw closer. The complex was dotted with police, medical personnel, PRT uniforms, all investigating the ruins. There was a hero, too, a man who stood seven feet tall in pale blue power armor, carring a segmented spear in his hands.

This was it.

The people below were already taking notice. Pointing at her where she floated a hundred feet above them in the air. She suppressed her aura and descended slowly, aiming at a vacant stretch of driveway off to the side of the people, so as not to alarm them any more than she had to. Her body was already intimidating enough.

She came to a halt in front of the hero, hovering five feet in the air.

The hero stared at her. No words, no aggression, no defensive posture, nothing beyond a tightening of his grip on his spear. Not what she expected.

Now that she had his attention it was time to send her message. She doubted he knew how to use the asylum's blink codes, but she had a way around that.

Victoria flew at a slow ten miles an hour, the hero following behind at a trot. A group of PRT uniforms approached, containment foam sprayers at the ready, but the hero waved them off.

She stopped a minute later when she reached the outdoor field, a recreation space for the more mobile patients to exercise. There was a large patch of soil where no grass was growing, the leftovers of an old baseball field.

Victoria flew in loops and curves, tilting on her side so that the edge of her body plowed into the soil, writing rough lines on the ground.

The first message was her intelligence report. That was easy. An arrow and two letters. "S9".

The hero caught her meaning immediately and signaled to the PRT uniforms and police. They were soon bustling into action, turning the asylum grounds into a hive of activity.

While they were occupied, Victoria carved out her second message. The selfish one, the one that got lower priority.

"HELPME"

The hero looked at her message, then stared at her for long seconds, unmoving. Why wasn't he saying anything? Did he think she was deaf?

The hero looked down at his suit of armor and tapped its compartments with the fingers of his free hand. As if he was searching for lost keys. Then he beckoned. Victoria flew a foot closer to him, and he seemed to accept it as a cue that she was following him.

He led her back to the gravel driveway, where a pair of PRT vans were parked. He strode up to one of the PRT uniforms, grabbed the clipboard the woman was carrying, and scribbled a message. He turned the clipboard around so she could see it.

"Glory Girl. You have an implanted tracker, possible audio line and bioweapons. I'll try to remove it in the van."

Victoria shuddered. _Fucking little monster! Lying scum. I knew it. Bonesaw lied to me. Am I going to die now? Is this where it ends?_

But her hatred and fear were washed away by a stronger emotion, an exhilerating relief, a wave of comforting warmth that wrapped around her like a blanket.

 _He didn't abandon me. He's helping me. He knows me. He cares for me. The heroes didn't forget me!_

The hero pointed at the open door of the van. She recognized the model, one built for airtight containment for biological hazards.

He must doubt that he could defuse the weapon without setting it off. He wanted to contain the damage so that only the two of them would die. Risking his life to save hers.

A hero.

Victoria flew into the back of the van. He followed her and sealed the door behind him. The space was cramped. Both of them were bigger than normal humans. She had to curl up her extremeties to fit, and he collapsed his spear to a fraction of its full length.

The hero aimed his spear at a spot on the back half of her body. The gentle curve of a hip, rising and falling from her carpet of flesh and skin.

A gray blur appeared at the tip of the spear. She had seen that weapon before. The tinkertech blade that Armsmaster had used to tear through Leviathan. Was he...?

"Hold still." he said.

There was a loud crack, her shield going down, and then a feeling of absence, wetness. A hole had been punched in her hip. She stared at the hole numbly for seconds before the pain began, a wave radiating through her flesh.

"Got it." he said. "Hold still, I need to patch you up."

She found it strangely easy to be still. This was the first real pain she had felt since her change, and she found that her body's reaction was strange, dulled, muted. She didn't feel any reflexive need to shrink away or shield the wounded area.

The hero produced a tube from his armor and sprayed something on her wound. This time she had more warning and she let it through her shield. A chemical that was hardening into a thick foam, something to treat the wound and stop the bleeding.

After a minute the hero put away the tube and regarded her.

"That was the only device I detected, but we'll do a more exhaustive scan on the Uther. Dragon has been getting more experience with Bonesaw's technology. She'll want to interview you for your intelligence on the Nine. Your dedication to heroism in your trying circumstances is commendable. Pending level 5 decontamination and tests for latent compulsions..."

It _was_ Armsmaster. She would recognize his manner of speech anywhere. Questions rose in a far corner of her mind. Wasn't he forced to retire? Why was he here, hunting the Nine?

But she didn't care about any of that, not now. All she knew was that his words felt like the comfort of home.

Armsmaster trailed off for a second, as if he was listening to something only he could hear. Maybe he felt the same way she did. Then he met the gaze of her front pair of eyes and began again. "Pending decon, you made it. You're safe now. Welcome back, Glory Girl."

It was being called by her code name that did it.

She had spent long months as a pitiful existence. Victoria Dallon, asylum patient. Now that was in the past. This was the day she was reborn.

She found herself forgetting her troubles, forgetting her warped body and mind and family. Feeling like _herself_ once more.

She could fly now, and her speed and finesse were better than ever. She was strong enough to knock down a tree in a single blow and tough enough to take the hit without blinking. She had faced an S-class threat and _won_ , beaten the Slaughterhouse Nine in a battle of willpower and escaped to set the Protectorate on their trail.

A set of muscles twitched for the first time in months. Her pairs of lips trying to turn into a menagerie of smiles.

Glory Girl was back.

...

...

Author's note: This is the start of the Silver Path. Next chapter is the reason why this path is called Silver.


	8. Silver Lining

Victoria Harris flew above the New York skyline, upside down, taking in a panoramic view of the nighttime city streets with her pairs of eyes. Her view was tinted by the soft glow from her costume, a relaxing shade of cool silver.

This was when she felt most at peace. The people below were as small as dots, their features impossible to make out, yet it made her feel _connected_ , as if the entire city was at her fingertips. As if she could land in front of anyone on the street and be instantly recognized as a hero. She was getting there, she knew. Her new identity's name recognition was increasing every day. A soothing thought.

Peace wasn't what she wanted today, though. She'd had enough solitude in the asylum to last a lifetime. She preferred lively company. And today she had guests to entertain.

A five minute flight and she was home. Her apartment on the twentieth floor of the complex next to the New York Protectorate HQ. A convenient living space for the one of the newer members of the Protectorate.

Her assistant greeted her at the open window. "Silver Lining. I got the goodies you wanted. Um, the corner store was out of classic flavor chips so I got the barbecue flavor, if that's cool with you."

Victoria spoke with the aid of her implant, her voice coming out with a faint electronic echo. "Thanks, Ashley. BBQ is fine. I'm not eating anyway."

Ashley smiled. "Cool. I'll set them right up."

It took most people a minute to get used to her electronic voice, with its slow monotone and irregular pauses between words. Dragon had done the best she could, making a synthetic version of her old voice and implanting her with the same neural interface she used for Armsmaster, but the tinker's cybernetics were developed for humans. They didn't mesh well with Victoria's 'uniquely deviant' body and brain, more like a jellyfish's nerve net than anything human. After their first two attempts at remodeling her body sent her into cardiac arrest, she decided to stick to safer and less invasive forms of assistive technology.

Ashley was an expert at understanding her, though. She was with the PRT, working shifts as Victoria's assistant while she trained for a more advanced position as a specialist in parahuman psychology.

Victoria liked Ashley. She was cheerful, punctual, didn't ask about her past, and helped her without making her feel like a cripple most of the time.

As a nice bonus, Ashley was decisively _not_ freckled, brown-haired, dimple-cheeked, et cetera. In other words, she looked nothing whatsoever like Amy. It was technically against the rules to choose her assistant based on her physical appearance, but given Victoria's condition the PRT had been willing to make an exception, but Victoria would have felt like crap rejecting a qualified applicant for that, so...yeah. Avoiding that bundle of issues had been a relief.

Ashley busied herself getting the refreshments together on the coffee table. "Smooth patrol tonight, Silver?"

Victoria arched her body in a nod. "Better than smooth. We caught the Grifters hitting a warehouse. The bastard teleporter got away as usual, but Chev and I nabbed the flunkies."

"Nice. Your turn as Chevalier's chariot again? I think he likes you best."

"Yeah, I know so."

"Chevalier's sweet on you? Lucky, lucky."

"Hey, no. It's not like that. All our movers who can carry him are girls, and I'm the only one who doesn't want to get in his pants."

"No way! Even Rerouter?"

"I know for a fact that he caught her checking out his ass in a firefight."

"Oh God." Ashley laughed. "I don't blame her. An eligible bachelor as the head of the Protectorate. He had to know what he was getting into when he took the promotion."

Victoria judged that Ashley was done with the refreshments and floated a foot closer. "Can you get off my costume? I want to shower before Sam brings in the guests."

"Cool. Let me get the zipper."

Victoria _loved_ her costume. Say what you wanted about PRT bureaucracy, they had an _awesome_ Department of Image. The department head, Glenn, had taken a personal interest in her case. He had been an unabashed fan of her Glory Girl persona and wanted to do justice to her new form.

Glenn had come up with a great concept that made her nearly family friendly. It had a personal meaning to her as well. The most important lesson her ordeals had taught her.

 _Every cloud has a Silver Lining._

Her costume was skintight silvery material tailored to fit her body, but it obscured the details of her shape with copious fuzzy, fluffy tufts and a hazy silver glow. It gave her the appearance of a formless silver cloud, floating in the sky and descending to earth to carry out the will of the heavens.

The only exposed part of her body was an oval for her most face-like appendage, the one with the eyes, nose, and mouth in almost the right positions. The rest of her eyes were covered with transparent silver-tinted material, letting her see clearly without making them obvious to casual inspection.

She was still damn intimidating, but she didn't make people faint or vomit or run screaming through the streets. That was important. Every second counted when she was ferrying kids from a burning building. Some of the kids had even approached and rubbed her fuzzy costume of their own free will.

Her costume was practical too. She could use her voice interface to dial up the glow to a stunning silver flash, and combine it with her aura to grab the attention of everyone in a wide area. Perfect for crowd control against villains, baiting them into wasting their attacks on her shield while her teammates caught them unawares. The silver light was at a very specific wavelength, so her teammates could wear goggles that filtered it out and left them unaffected.

The only downside was the unavoidable one. Her body was...big, and lumpy, and irregular. Which meant her costume was an ungainly mess of straps and buckles and zippers that was a bitch to get off.

Thankfully she had Ashley for that.

"Um, can you turn around to the left?" said Ashley, tugging at a zipper. "Yeah, there. Oh, I forgot. You got a voice mail from Dragon. She said to call her back."

"I'll call her in the shower. How long do we have? Twenty minutes?"

"Thirty. Plenty of time. Here, let me get the...okay. Done."

Victoria floated up to help her pull the costume free. The air of her apartment felt cool on her skin. It should have been embarrassing, being naked in front of a staff member, but she had gotten used to it in the asylum.

"Thanks, Ash. Can you bring out my casual outfit? The blue one with the cloud print."

"Ooh, going fancy."

"They're old friends. Gotta dress to impress."

Victoria floated into her bathroom. The shower was simply an open space with a gently sloping floor leading to a drain. There were two shower heads mounted on the ceiling that she could switch on and off with her voice. Soapy suds to clean her, then water to wash her off. She'd had Ashley set the sprays to their highest power setting. It took a conscious effort to let the spray through her shield, but she liked the firm touch.

She floated under the warm spray of water and let it wash her clean. After a moment the water began to pool on her body, concentrations collecting in the nooks and crannies between the menagerie of body parts on the top surface of her body. She used her flight to arch her body, letting rivulets of water flow down her back and splash on the floor.

She would have liked to let herself unwind, take a long shower to relax before her guests arrived, but she had business to take care of. She spoke out loud.

"Implant, call Dragon."

She heard her implant dial the number, the sound conveyed to one of her ears by an audio line. The tinker picked up on the second ring.

"Hello, Silver Lining." said Dragon. "Good job with the Grifters today. They hit one of my depots two weeks ago and I had to self-destruct it as a security measure. A total loss. The sooner we take them down the better."

"Thanks. We'll get the bastards next time." It was a little creepy how Dragon knew absolutely everything she did. She'd thought the tinker was stalking her at first, spying on her with her implant, but apparently she did that to everyone. "You're not calling about my patrol."

"No. I'm afraid I have bad news. The last batch of bioelectric cells from my suppliers has been wearing out at an accelerated rate. You'll have to come in for implant maintenance as soon as possible. Does Thursday work for you? Say three PM?"

"Damn. Let me check. Implant, say calendar for Thursday." An artificial voice played in her ear, listing the events on her schedule. "Yeah, three's fine."

"Good. I also have a new algorithm I want to try for your voice system. You should see a noticeable improvement in your ability to control your tone of voice."

Victoria did her best to convey enthusiasm in her artificial voice. "Great! Fantastic! Thank you so much Dragon. I can't wait. It's hard to get people to take me seriously when they think I'm an emotionless robot."

"I can see how that would be frustrating."

"It's cramping my social life, yeah, but the real problem is that it's affecting my heroing. The other day I was saving kids from a house fire. I told them 'climb on my back, now now now!', but I couldn't control the volume, the emotion, so they didn't get that they had to hurry. That was a close one."

"I read your report. You were insistent on that point."

"Yeah. It's just, you've done so much for me. You're a lifesaver Dragon, a true hero, the most heroic person I know, and you work so damn hard at it. I guess I, um, I feel like I should keep you updated on new chances for heroism. Where you can put your effort to do the most good."

"Thank you, Silver Lining. I do what I can. It's the support from true heroes like you that keeps me going." Dragon's voice was a touch warmer than before. "Your feedback is always welcome. Helps me pare down my mile-long priority queue. Speaking of which, there's a microreactor in my workshop I have to attend to. If there's nothing else...?"

"Nah, that's it. Over and out, lizard lady."

She could hear a smile in Dragon's voice, this time. "See you Thursday, cumulus child. Enjoy your company."

The call disconnected. 'Enjoy your company'? Yeah, Dragon was totally stalking her.

Victoria turned off the shower and spun herself in the air to get off most of the damp. She would have let out a deep sigh, if she had been able to.

Her meetings with Dragon were always stressful. She knew she was supposed to love the genius tinker who restored her voice. So she put on a mask and pretended to be the cheerful, fawning syncophant Dragon wanted her to be.

It had been like this ever since her change. Crippled, depending on others for the basic necessities of life...and those _others_ didn't have her best interests at heart. She had to put on a mask and act like they wanted her to act to stay on their good side.

First she'd had to suck up to the doctors. Pretending to be the model patient they wanted her to be, hiding the worst of her rage and resentment, suppressing her aura on command like a trained dog. All to coax them into liking her a little better, giving in to more of her requests, making her life as a cripple a little more tolerable.

Then she'd had to suck up to Bonesaw. Every second of her days with the Nine had been lived on a razor's edge. A single word, a single moment's hesitation, a single _blink_ , was all that stood between her and damnation. Please the tinker and her pal Mister Jack and she'd get another part of herself fixed. Displease them and she'd be lobotimized and turned into a toy.

Now she had to suck up to Dragon. She hated it. Dragon was supposed to be different. She was a _hero_. Her technology was a poor substitute for Bonesaw's but it didn't have to be paid for in the blood of innocents. And Dragon was renowned for her kind-heartedness and virtue. Every word the woman spoke was brimming with sympathy for Victoria's plight.

But Victoria knew that was all a front. Dragon wasn't helping her out of the goodness of her heart.

The proof was plain as day. Dragon must have had the technology for months, ever since she'd used it to save Armsmaster's life. And Dragon knew everything, she had to have read Victoria's incessant letters to the PRT begging them for help. But Dragon hadn't helped her then. She'd only given Victoria the implant after she'd gotten her flight back, after she'd applied to join her hero organization, after she'd become _useful_ to the tinker as an asset and a tool.

Victoria imagined what the tinker must have thought as she read her desperate pleas from the asylum.

 _The broken girl wants to talk, does she? Pfft! I'm not going to waste my tinkering time on a useless invalid._

 _Oh, she can fly now? My bosses at the Protectorate think they can wring some use out of her as a hero? Fine, I'll whip up a copy of what I made for Armsy. No need to waste time adapting it for her freaky brain, the basic package is plenty good enough for her._

Yeah, right. The tinker's self-serving 'kindness' was a mutually beneficial business deal and nothing more.

Of course, she never let a hint of her true feelings about Dragon slip to anyone. She wasn't stupid. That would poison their relationship. Dragon would feel hurt and betrayed. She'd realize that Victoria wasn't the cheerful fawning company girl she wanted her to be. Then Dragon would punish her. Refuse her upgrade requests, skip maintenance on her implant with any number of plausible excuses, _take her voice away from her..._

...and that would be it. Her hero career would be crippled. Can't coordinate with her team. Can't use her voice to make people overlook her body and judge her as a _person_. She'd be reduced to a _thing_ , just like her mother had called her, a _thing_ that wasn't her daughter anymore, and the heroes would all abandon her just like her family did-

No. Couldn't let that happen. So Victoria took a minute to go over the call in her mind, and make a mental note of what she'd learned to stay on Dragon's good side.

 _Dragon hates the Grifters too. I'll prioritize them on my patrols. If I take down that teleporter I'll get kudos from her._

 _She was more willing to fix me when I emphasized how it would save lives. Maybe I can convince her to give me an artificial arm next. I'll tell her it'll let me hoist people onto my back, hold them so they don't fall off, cuff criminals to arrest them..._

Ashley's voice filtered in to the bathroom. "Everything cool in there, Silver? Need anything?"

"I'm fine. Just a minute." said Victoria. She used a voice command to activate the dryers. Towels were inefficient for a body of her size and shape, so the Protectorate had installed a system with jets of warm air. She rotated her body slowly in the air, making sure the dryers hit all the odd spots on her irregularly-shaped body.

Three minutes later she floated into her bedroom. Ashley was waiting for her with her outfit laid out on the floor, on the arrangement of extra-large mattresses that served as her bed.

Her casual clothes were easier to put on than her costume, little more than mildly tailored bedsheets with holes for her most face-like appendage and a few of the better-positioned eyes on her flanks. They made her look like a particularly bulky, lumpy ghost.

The outfit for today was her nicest one. White clouds floating on a sky blue background. A match for her theme in her cape identity.

Ashley beckoned. "Can you float a little lower? I want to comb your hair."

"It won't show when I'm wearing my clothes."

"Yeah, but your hair gets in the zippers. Don't want you to get stuck again."

"Okay, okay."

Ashley took a minute to run a comb through Victoria's heads of hair one by one, then unzipped her outfit and began the unenviable task of wrestling it onto her body.

Victoria rotated slightly in the air to point her eyes away from her bedroom's decorations. Not something she wanted on her mind, now.

Her living room was filled with mementos of her short life in her new identity as Victoria Harris. Testaments to the joy she took in her life as a glorious hero. Photos of her time in the Wards and promotion to the Protectorate, posing with her team for publicity photos. News clippings about her exploits. The great photo the reporter had gotten of her flying children to safety from a fire, and another of her wrapping up a villain during a drug bust.

Her bedroom...this was her private place. The only place she kept remnants of her old life.

Her old life in Brockton Bay...she wished she could forget it. Erase it. She'd thought she had a perfect life, and then her so-called family had betrayed her one by one. Her sister mutilated her, her mother disowned her, her father went along with it because he was too weak to stick up for his daughter, her aunt and cousin never once visited her in the asylum with their endless raft of excuses.

Now that she could move and speak and be a hero again they _suddenly_ wanted to snake their way back into her life. Sending her emails and arranging trips to visit her.

Yeah, right. She wasn't stupid. They were the same as Dragon but they didn't have anything of value to offer her. Only their love as a family, and she knew what _that_ was worth. She didn't want any part of it.

She'd gone through the legal proceedings to emancipate herself from her parents. She'd greased the wheels by getting the PRT on her side, by promising to join the Wards and then join the Protectorate when she turned eighteen. The judge had been impressed by Dragon's recording of her mother Carol giving a loving goodbye hug to Amy, the psychotic villain sister who mutilated her...then saying she was happy to neglect Victoria, her crippled superhero daughter, coldly disowning her and calling her a _mockery_. There was no way she was going back to that household.

As a final touch Victoria had invoked a PRT regulation to get a new legal identity. She'd changed her last name to Harris, short for Harrisburg. The name of the asylum where her new self had been born.

It wasn't entirely perfect. Every few weeks Victoria got an email from a throwaway account that was _obviously_ one of her ex-family, begging for forgiveness and trying to make contact.

She told them she'd talk to them again in a year's time, _if_ they fought with her on the front lines to stop the Nine from ending the world. Then they could talk...about tactics or capes or powers. Just like any other pair of strangers in the defending forces. If they wanted to build a relationship with her, they'd have to start from scratch.

Then she had Ashley block their email addresses. Her assistant complied without a word. She loved her for that.

After that was dealt with, the only relic of her past life she kept was the one she could never discard. The set of three framed photographs on her bedroom wall, each blown up to be two feet across.

 _Amy._

She'd tried to eliminate the false love her sister had planted in her mind, but it was futile. Maybe she could have done it if she'd had anchors to balance it, back when the compulsion had first been instilled. But instead she'd been locked in the asylum with nothing but the bright spark of love for company. It had bled into every corner of her mind.

After their best attempts failed, her therapists told her that it was best to resign herself to her undying love and try to compartmentalize it. Admit that it was a part of her and try to keep it _only_ a part.

The three photographs were her concession. One was a childhood photo. Victoria and Amy at a birthday party, age 7. They were making a valiant attempt to smile for the camera while Amy stuffed a piece of cake into Victoria's mouth with her bare hands. They were entirely too pleased with the mess they were making.

The second was a publicity photo from the day they had officially joined the New Wave. Victoria resplendent in her Glory Girl outfit, hovering a foot above the ground and holding Amy in a bridal carry in her arms. They were smiling a mile wide. They could take on the world.

The third was the last photo they had taken together, the day before Leviathan attacked. A candid snap from their cousin's camera as Victoria was getting ready to fly Amy to her shift at the hospital. Victoria was holding Amy's head in her hands, adjusting the hood of her healer's robe. Victoria had a smirk on her face, a mix of humor and exasperation at her sister's fashion sense. Amy was biting her lip and blushing a little, a mix of embarrassment at her busybody sister and what Victoria now knew was romantic affection.

It was impossible to hold back the love, the warmth, the _longing_ that shot through her every time she saw them.

She did her mental compartmentalization exercise.

 _I love Amy. The Amy who was my sister, the Amy who was worthy of my love. My lovely Amy is gone, now. She died at the hands of the Slaughterhouse Nine. All that's left is a shell. An insane villain who hurt me and was sent to the Birdcage. I love the good Amy and not the villain who stole her face._

 _I am capable of new love. I am worthy of being loved, even as I am now. It will take time, but I will find a new partner who loves me. In every sense of the word._

The therapists said that with enough work she would be able to have a romantic relationship one day. Maybe even a relationship with a man, if she found one who appreciated her new shape. She still found boys attractive in a distant way, just less so than slim frizzy-haired freckled brunettes. According to one of Bonesaw's offhand comments she could even bear children, although the PRT's gynecologists hadn't been able to figure out the mechanics yet.

She was at peace with her past now. Or, if not peace, at least a steady truce. She left her past alone and it left her alone. She was free to focus on the present, and on her bright future shining in shades of silver.

It was liberating. She was truly _enjoying_ her life, for the first time since Leviathan attacked Brockton Bay. She seized the day and lived each minute like it was her last. She was free, now, and she was going to make every second count.

Her guests today were another positive step. Reconnecting with some of the few people from her past life she still considered her friends. She was looking forward to this.

Ashley fiddled with one of the zippers. "Victoria, am I okay to stay? I don't know your friends, and if you guys are going to talk about cape stuff-"

"Sam said you're cleared for their IDs." said Victoria. "Thought she told you."

"Nope. Not a word."

"Huh. It figures." Victoria didn't need to elaborate. Sam was Prism, the second in command of the New York branch. She had to take command whenever Chevalier was busy with his duties as Protectorate leader, and ironically given her power, multi-tasking wasn't her strong suit. She inevitably let a few issues slip through the cracks.

The door buzzer rang. Ashley finished zipping up Victoria's outfit, gave her a smile, and hustled into the living room to the intercom. "Harris residence."

The response came from the intercom box. "Hey, this is Sam. Coming up to see Victoria with three guests."

"Sure! Buzzing you in." said Ashley.

Three guests? Sam had said she'd invited two. It wasn't like Sam to change her plans up on Victoria at the last minute. Maybe that was a good sign. Sam wasn't treating her like an emotionally fragile ex-asylum inmate anymore.

A few minutes later there was a knock at the door.

Sam was there, dressed in a casual outfit showing off her gymnast's body. A deliberate choice on her part. Sam was looking for a new boyfriend after her flings with Triumph and Phase Plane fell through, and she was having trouble finding a suitable beau.

Sam's eyes had a telltale look that meant she was only _one-third_ of Sam. She was using her power to split herself in three, sending one self to hang out with Victoria and using her other two selves to do Protectorate paperwork. Poor dutiful soul.

The one-third of Sam who was present smiled and walked inside. "Hey Victoria. Nice job with the Grifters. I brought your old friends from the Wards..."

Behind her came a redheaded boy in jeans and a video game themed tee shirt, and a younger, blonde girl in a green dress.

Dennis and Missy. The first time they'd seen her since she'd become like this.

Victoria floated closer to get a better look. The two Wards stopped in the doorway, their prepared smiles frozen on their faces. But they didn't gasp, and they didn't take a step backward in retreat. Sam must have given them the briefing and showed them pictures in advance.

Then again, Dennis and Missy were Brockton Bay capes. They dealt with ten kinds of fucked-up shit before breakfast.

"Hi Vicky!" said Missy. "Congratulations on making the major leagues! Still four years left for me."

Dennis cleared his throat. "We came to check up on your Stratus. Jouster told me you're dating Chevalier but I couldn't tell if he was Cirrus."

Missy elbowed him in the ribs. "Damn it Dennis. I bet you were thinking of cloud puns the whole way here. I bet you were _practicing_."

Yeah, Brockton Bay capes.

"Ha ha ha ha." said Victoria. She couldn't laugh anymore, not spontaneously, but she could make a deliberate substitute. "Hi Missy. Hi Dennis the menace. Jouster told me you're dating Weaver."

Dennis gave a pained look. "Right, we're agreed. Our next mission is breaking into the Wards HQ and double teaming Jouster. You wrap him up and I'll put him on pause."

"Ha ha. So you're not denying it. Is that spider silk you're wearing?"

Dennis groaned. "Not in front of our guest. She's already too big for her britches."

Victoria caught sight of a third person in the hallway behind them, off to the side and out of the doorframe. Victoria floated up two feet to get a better vantage point.

A tall girl with long, dark, curly hair, standing very still and not quite meeting her eyes.

Sam made a gesture. "Another Ward you know from Brockton Bay. Not a _friend_ ," she gave the girl a glance, "but she was in town on a mission and wanted to give you her regards."

The girl stepped forward. "Hi. I...you might not want to talk to me, and that's okay. I can go if you want. But now that we're on the same side I want to apologize to you and clear the air between us. We might need to work together and I thought it's...it's a chance for a new beginning. For both of us."

The girl raised her eyes to meet hers. "Nice to meet you, Victoria. I'm Taylor Hebert. Weaver."

Victoria stared in shock. Her aura flared. The girl's eyes went wide, her pupils dilating, her hands shaking.

Sam brought _her?_

Victoria knew what she was supposed to do. Put on a mask and be the good little company girl her superior wanted her to be. A pleasant team player eager to forgive the warlord's sins now that she had conned the top brass into giving her amnesty.

But it was Her. Taylor Hebert. Skitter. The psycho who took Amy hostage with a knife to her throat. Swarmed Victoria with bugs in the bank, humiliated her again at the fundraiser. Brought her to her sister for 'healing' against her will, then stood by and let her sister seize control of her mind. The warlord who committed even more atrocities while Victoria was in the asylum, who took over Brockton Bay and murderered her favorite hero Alexandria.

She itched to attack. To make the villain pay.

Images flashed through her mind. Impressions of the people she hated the most, the targets for her vengeance. Her family standing above her mutilated body, her sister's insane empty eyes, her mother's cold snarl of disgust. Bonesaw unleashing hell on Brockton Bay and breaking her sister's mind.

Then...

...Another flash of images. The people who had given her her moments of greatest delight. Her parents with proud smiles as they inducted her into New Wave in front of the TV cameras. Her sister cheering her on as she raced Laserdream across the bay. Bonesaw fixing her broken powers and applauding as she did a loop-the-loop in the sky.

 _The same people._

This girl in front of her...she was the same as them.

Tormented her and Amy, declared war on the heroes, took over her city. _Skitter the warlord._

Saved her life from Crawler, fought Jack and Bonesaw to save her a second time, surrendered to the authorities to turn her life around. _Weaver the hero._

Victoria slowly relaxed her aura.

"You know." she said. "It's been a running theme in my life. The people who help me the most, hurt me. And the people who hurt me the most, help me."

Taylor was silent.

"These other people here. Sam, Dennis, Missy. They've been good to me and they've never hurt me, not once. Friends. That's rare. You're not like that."

"I get that." said Taylor. "Say the word and I'll-"

"But." said Victoria. "I can maybe be okay with that. Keep up the helping part, don't do the hurting part anymore, and...we might possibly get along."

Taylor regarded her, then gave a solemn nod. "I'll try my best."

Victoria used her flight to curl the edges of her body. A replacement for a frown. "Does that mean 'Yes, Victoria, I'll be a good hero from now on'?"

"...It means I'll try."

Victoria tilted her body a fraction, a questioning expression. "You're going to help us crush the Nine?"

"Hell yes." said Taylor, animated for the first time since she'd arrived. "That's part of why I came. I want to know what you overheard when you were with them. If you're willing to talk about that."

"...Okay. Then you can come in." Victoria thought back to Bonesaw. "But Weaver. If you give me a hug or start singing Love Bug, I swear I'll squish you like a gnat. That goes double if you try it with your bugs."

Taylor smiled a little at that. "I can live with that."

"Ugh. I'd squish you too." said Missy. "That show's for eight year olds."

Dennis jumped in. "I can't squish you, but I'll make you regret it for a long, long time."

"No threatening your fellow Wards. Kids these days." said Sam. She ushered the heroes inside.

Victoria flew to the center of the living room. "Make yourselves at home. We've got refreshments for you courtesy of my lovely assistant Ashley. Ashley, meet Missy, Dennis, and Taylor. Wards, meet Ashley."

"Charmed." said Ashley.

Victoria settled onto her extra-large beanbag chair, and made merry with her fellow heroes long into the night.

...

...

Author's note: End of the Silver Path. Happy(?) end! Glory Girl Returns is complete! There might be an epilogue or bonus chapter to come.


End file.
